Science: Cotton Milestone

When the Rust brothers produced their first picking machine, in 1935, a
revolution in cotton farming was forecast. But mechanical cotton
culture ran into many snags, has proved much more evolutionary than
revolutionary. Last week the movement passed a milestone. Near
Clarksdale, Miss., where John Rust began a tryout of an improved
picker, a pioneering plantation harvested the first commercial cotton
crop ever produced, from planting to baling, entirely by machine.

Hopson's Picking. The scene was a 28-acre field on the 4,000-acre
plantation of the Hopson Planting Co. International Harvester Co.
mechanical pickers,...